A printer apparatus is conventionally designed for use with a specific set of colorants (a colorant-set). For example, some ink-jet printers are designed for use with an ink-set comprising just a black ink cartridge in combination with a single color ink cartridge, while other printers are designed for a four-color printing process having four individual ink cartridges corresponding to black, cyan, magenta and yellow (known as CMYK), while other printer apparatus are specifically designed for a six-color printing process having four individual ink cartridges corresponding to black, cyan, magenta and yellow, plus light dye load colorants corresponding to light-cyan and light-magenta (known as CMYKcm). Other printer systems use additional ink cartridges, such as orange and green to further enhance the gamut of the printers. Other printing systems may additionally use one or multiple other spot colours such as specific Pantone colours or speciality inks such as metallic inks.
In each of these examples a particular printer apparatus is static in design, in so far as the colorant-set used in a particular printer apparatus is determined when designing the printer, with the colorant-set then determining which resources are used in that printer, both hardware and software resources (such as color maps and media presets, etc.). This means that a particular printer is only capable of using the colorant-set is was designed for.